Corroborative Evidence and the Gospels: Can We Expect it to Verify Every Detail?by J. Warner Wallace

Introduction

When jurors evaluate witnesses in criminal cases, they examine evidence
in an effort to corroborate the statements offered by these witnesses.
Jurors are looking for some limited confirmation of the facts offered on the
stand. Imagine, for example, a witness testifies that the robbery suspect
approached the bank teller, pointed a gun at her (using his right hand),
began to climb up onto the counter (using his left hand), screamed at the
teller, and demanded that she give him the money from the cash drawer.
Jurors who hear this testimony may want some additional evidence to confirm
that the witness statement is accurate. As a result, prosecutors may
introduce fingerprint (or shoeprint) evidence from the counter in an effort
to corroborate the witness. If the fingerprints on the counter match the
fingerprints from the suspect's left hand and the shoeprint matches the
suspect's shoe, the statement of the witness would be considered reliable
and corroborated by the evidence.

Nature of corroborative evidence

But did you notice that print evidence from the counter did nothing to
confirm the specific actions of the suspect, beyond his contact with the
surface? This corroborative evidence told us nothing about why he climbed
the counter, nothing about his possession of a firearm, and nothing about
his demand for money. While the fingerprints and shoeprint corroborate the
statement of the eyewitness, they do so without establishing every possible
detail. This is the nature of corroborative evidence; each piece addresses
and verifies a "touchpoint", a small aspect of the testimony that is
sufficient to corroborate the larger account. Even if the prosecution had a
video tape of the entire robbery, many aspects of the witness' testimony
would still be missing (like the audio portion of the crime, most likely).
At some point, jurors have to trust what the witness has to say about the
event. Corroborative evidence always verifies a limited range of witness
claims.

About the Author

J. Warner Wallace is a cold-case homicide detective and a Christian case
maker at Stand to Reason.
Formerly a vocal atheist, at the age of thirty-five, J. Warner took a serious and
expansive look at the evidence for the Christian Worldview and determined that
Christianity was demonstrably true. J. Warner's first book,
Cold-Case Christianity, provides readers with ten principles of cold case
investigations and utilizes these principles to examine the reliability of the
gospel eyewitness accounts.

Rich Deem, editor

Corroborative evidence and the gospels

This is also the case with the evidence that corroborates the witness
testimony of the Gospel accounts. Skeptics often argue that corroboration of
the Gospels is too limited, but the nature of the corroborative evidence
shouldn't surprise us. We should expect to find "touchpoint" corroboration;
partial details that tend to corroborate the larger account. So when
archaeology confirms some limited percentage of the geographic claims of the
Gospels, this should be seen as a significant step toward corroboration.
When a first century non-Christian author mentions some limited aspect of
the Christian narrative, this should be seen as a significant step toward
corroboration. When internal evidence (the correct description of proper
names, government structure and cultural setting) substantiates some limited
aspect of the Christian accounts, this should be seen as a significant step
toward corroboration. And when all these corroborative evidences are
considered in unison, this should be acknowledged as reasonable verification
of the ancient accounts contained in the Gospels.

Conclusions

Corroborative evidence is always limited; it always addresses some small
aspect of the event under consideration. Jurors then extrapolate from this
corroboration to determine if the broader testimony is reliable. They do
this after they assess the testimony with the three other questions I
described in Cold-Case
Christianity ("Were the witnesses present?" "Were the
witnesses accurate?" and "Were the witnesses biased?"). We can't expect the
corroborative evidence to establish every claim made by the witness.
Instead, the corroborative evidence provides us with another important piece
of the puzzle related to reliability. At some point, we then have to trust
what the witnesses say about the event.